Sandworms and Arrakis. A single planet in a single system, otherwise desolate, but produces the spice, the necessary component for all travel between systems.

Ships equip Navigators that can jump from any system too any system for the same amount of spice, but each jump requires more spice than the last for a given Navigator until it's just unfeasible to use them and it needs to be replaced.

Sandworms produce a lot of spice, but the spice isn't produced constantly, but in periodic batches.

Last edited by Hyperion on Mon Jun 05, 2017 4:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

When you're trying to fill an infinite multiverse, if you're not willing to consider the entire creative output of humanity as a starting point, you're wasting your time.
User: JoshParnell is accountable for this user's actions.

Sandworms and Arrakis. A single planet in a single system, otherwise desolate, but produces the spice, the necessary component for all travel between systems.

Ships equip Navigators that can jump from any system too any system for the same amount of spice, but each jump requires more spice than the last for a given Navigator until it's just unfeasible to use them and it needs to be replaced.

Sandworms produce a lot of spice, but the spice isn't produced constantly, but in periodic batches.

YES PLEASE! I'm a Dune fan to the core, Hyperion, and would love to see this. I was hoping for something like this in NMS but..

History Manipulation
Not quite sure how history generation will go, but it would be awesome if we could tinker either with Global PCG variables, or discrete entities.
For example pausing history gen at a certain spot and just granting some faction 5 more fully developed core systems and 10 more partially developed periphery systems... Other Variables include : Culture Vectors, TechTree, Infrastructure priority, Tall vs Wide, xenophilia vs xenophobia, vengefulness, etc...

Or manipulating the Global "Faction Stability with expansion" variable to cause factions to splinter at smaller stages.
I suspect this would need a sort of Omniscient map of a large area arouynd the starting system before actually starting the game, making history gen sort of like an interactive version of the Dwarf Fortress Parameter menu, where you can change a few discrete variables or maybe even the whole seed used for history gen at any point.

CIV:LT
This takes history manipulation and gamifies it.
You get control of a faction in the history gen mode, and you can change variables, but you have to earn points to do so. you don't directly control the faction, but you can assign it priorities at the highest level, such as "Colonize this system" or "Build a warp lane highway from this system to this system" or "Wage economic warfare on this faction" or "Focus on these n tech branches".
I think it would be really cool to go from CIV:LT in a faction you guided for a thousand ingame years and jump into regular LT and explore it

The Invisible Hand
You ARE the blackbox. You control/manipulate the generation of various resources, the success rate of research, the gaussian mean of price valuations. You can let them flow dynamically, or you can adjust them, lock them in place, cause a goldrush here, an economic collapse there. Nothing more, nothing less.

The Underspace
Life is but a single chapter in existence. Death brings you to a completely new universe from which you cannot return, the new universe is finite, and comes with some very distinct spoke-sectors surrounding and connecting only to a hub system with the grand City of the Dead, ruled by an infinitely powerful, but relatively unconcerned Lord of Death that serves as a policeman for the city.
Spoke regions include

A Dark and gloomy region comprised of systems with wandering holographic ships going about their business but you can't interact with them in any way, but they and you and other npcs who died can trade at stations (aka Gothic Graveyard)

A Burning region full of lava worlds and space in these systems is whipped by violent flares and waves of plasma (aka Hell)

A Bright and colorful region with systems rich in resources, healing zones, and excessive use of bloom (aka heaven),

A Valhalla like region, where great battles are always occuring as ships spawn to defend the region from other ships which spawn to invade it. The player can join the defenders but not the invaders. The invaders can "capture the flag" of the defenders, stop their spawning, conquer the whole spoke out to the city of the dead, try to invade the city, only to be invariably beaten back with ease by the Lord of Death who restores the balance. The defenders can also win and "capture the flag" of the invaders and temporarily halt the invasion before after a time a new portal opens somewhere in the spoke and the war begins again.

A Karmic region, where a random culture vector has been selected as the "Ideal way of being" and the closer your culture stats are to that ideal, the better you will be treated by the inhabitants, the further away, the more hostile they are.

A Journey world through many systems, that form many paths, but all eventually lead to a portal that reincarnates you into a normal LT universe. The systems are filled with "hungry souls" that are individually weak, but swarm you, and can only be pacified by feeding them different resources. "Angels, Demons, Guardians", very strong AI that never leave the system, and help you, attack you, or send you on impossible missions/quests throughout the underworld before letting you pass through to the next system. Occasional heaven/hell systems, occasional random-physics systems, occasional "Shrines from the living" that give small amounts of free random resources.

If you die in the underspace, you reincarnate in the City of the Dead as a standard weak ship. No research takes place in the underspace, but a huge range of tech and components are for sale by the Lord of Death, to outfit you for whatever you plan to do.
The different regions exist simultaneously, and can interact with each other, never connecting directly to one another but always through the City of the Dead. It's totally possible to set up a business transporting goods from heaven to hell, or recruiting warriors from Valhalla to help you make it through to the reincarnation portal and so on.

When you're trying to fill an infinite multiverse, if you're not willing to consider the entire creative output of humanity as a starting point, you're wasting your time.
User: JoshParnell is accountable for this user's actions.

The Oblivion Gates
Throughout the universe various "singularities" form in random places. These singularities form, grow for a bit, and then explode, erasing from existence whatever is in their blast radius. Most often these are small, the singularity being the size of a small rock, and the explosion only being about the size of a large asteroid. However, with ever decreasing probability, they can grow ever larger until the singularity is the size of a star and it's blast radius will take out an entire sector with dozens of systems.

So, what to do about them? Well the only way to stop them is to completely encapsulate them in a special technobabble shield where they can explode harmlessly inside the shield and provide an enormous source of energy for powering everything from missiles to ships to the whole faction. If it's a small singularity,you could get a box to put it in at a nearby station, if it's larger, it might be a project that someone takes on for a contract. But if it grows to be the huge ones that can erase the whole system or whole sector, then there are 3 options: Evacuate, come together and build a container around it as fast as possible, or die. Because the largest ones are the size of stars, it becomes a thing of "How fast can you build a dyson sphere?"

These singularities will need to come with their own triggers for the AI, getting them to respond in a few different ways: They can get their shit and get out, they can temporarily put aside their differences to prevent the total destruction of the area, they can block the exits and trap people inside the danger zone, and so on. The AI will need to understand this as a high priority global event.

Now, what happens if the dyson sphere is built? the singularity goes boom, a fabulous light show takes place in the container, and free energy for everyone in the area for pretty much forever! YAY! also, you get to continue living! YAY!
What happens if it isn't built and the singularity explodes? Well, for anyone caught in the blast radius, game over, including the player. All assets, zones, planets, ships, wormholes, systems, etc. Are all annihilated. But, all is not lost, because the singularity, as it destroys, also creates. For every system a singularity takes out, it will create a new procgen system in it's place. So when a sector is erased, it's actually just "reformatted". When the blast dies down, you can go in, and find a bunch of virgin systems, filled with resources and planets and whatnot, ripe for colonization!

So basically: There are harvestable sources of energy, then there are big projects that you need to work together with to prevent them from destroying an area, and if you fail, it reformats the system(s).

When you're trying to fill an infinite multiverse, if you're not willing to consider the entire creative output of humanity as a starting point, you're wasting your time.
User: JoshParnell is accountable for this user's actions.

and now one of the damn things spawns in a system nobody has yet found the exit to and the player gets game over from nothing e could even know about....

Wouldn't the player know about it the moment they read and decide to install the mod?

That doesnt tell you when and where it happens, though
If a mod's description would read "kills you randomly without warning" and fulfils its promise its still damn unfun when it happens, regardless of the rest of the mod's fun and quality

System destroying ones would take a while to go boom, and would be quite large. if say it also had a nice scanner reading to go with it, it would be a hard thing to miss. if you've been hanging around in a system for a day or 3 and don't know about the giant bomb that's about to erase it? Well, no one ever said the losers of natural selection found losing fun. Big ones do more damage, but come with greater warning, obviously. However, just because you have warning, doesn't mean these can't totally fcuk you over. and in downloading the mod, you accept that small risk.

When you're trying to fill an infinite multiverse, if you're not willing to consider the entire creative output of humanity as a starting point, you're wasting your time.
User: JoshParnell is accountable for this user's actions.

System destroying ones would take a while to go boom, and would be quite large. if say it also had a nice scanner reading to go with it, it would be a hard thing to miss. if you've been hanging around in a system for a day or 3 and don't know about the giant bomb that's about to erase it? Well, no one ever said the losers of natural selection found losing fun. Big ones do more damage, but come with greater warning, obviously. However, just because you have warning, doesn't mean these can't totally fcuk you over. and in downloading the mod, you accept that small risk.

System destroying ones would take a while to go boom, and would be quite large. if say it also had a nice scanner reading to go with it, it would be a hard thing to miss. if you've been hanging around in a system for a day or 3 and don't know about the giant bomb that's about to erase it? Well, no one ever said the losers of natural selection found losing fun. Big ones do more damage, but come with greater warning, obviously. However, just because you have warning, doesn't mean these can't totally fcuk you over. and in downloading the mod, you accept that small risk.

if that thing is in a completely different system that nobody yet reached? sure, i'd be damn pissed because it wasnt even possible for me to know that thing was there

If that was turned on, Random Horrible Things -- fire, flood, tornado, meltdown, "Godzilla" -- would rampage through your carefully-constructed city, wreaking havoc while you desperately tried to contain, and then repair, the damage.

Maybe surprisingly, this wasn't always as upsetting as it might sound. Often a city just grew organically, leaving parts unoptimized... but a good disaster provided an opportunity to fix those problems in the light of hindsight.

But even that wasn't the best part about disasters. The best part was, after spending hours and hours painstakingly organizing a city, managing its traffic and pollution and taxes to become a thriving megalopolis, to sit back for a while and enjoy its awesomeness... and then turn on disasters and invoke every single one of them simultaneously.

There was something weirdly cathartic about seeing all those hours of effort obliterated in a few moments. To see how easily so much constructive effort could be unmade communicated valuable lessons. One was that we value creation over destruction because creation is harder. When you see how quickly order can be reduced to chaos, you gain an appreciation for order.

Another lesson is in the impermanence of things. Entropy can be fought locally for a while, but in the end the Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics will always win. Disasters in Sim City play the role of Entropy, as though Will Wright himself were the slave in the chariot behind you, whispering in your triumphing hero's ear: "Remember, Caesar, that thou art mortal." Without constant effort to maintain order, things fall apart, and the center cannot hold.

Those may seem like deep lessons to take from a relatively simple game. But the "Sim" part of Sim City creates the opportunity to see useful metaphors for our own real world in a game.

It sure would be interesting if the simulationist aspects of Limit Theory might offer similar insights. Disasters of various kinds might be good for this game, too.